Caught in the Middle (24 page)

I could tell Curt had returned when I smelled the coffee. I turned and took the mug he offered. The warmth of the mug made my fingers feel less brittle, and the hot liquid eased the chill in my heart.

“He said he believed,” I said, nodding toward the letter. “I wonder what he meant. Did he believe in Jesus as his Savior?”

Curt shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope so. And I don’t think the Bible says that killing yourself negates your salvation. It’s wrong, just like lots of other things are wrong, but it doesn’t cause God to ostracize you from heaven or anything.”

I noticed Officer Schumann approaching us, and I tensed. What now?

“The sergeant says you two can go,” she said. “There’s no more reason for you to hang around here tonight. He’ll contact you when he needs you.”

We nodded in relief and walked slowly to the door. I turned and looked back at the newsroom. It’d never be the same again. No Don sitting in ordered splendor before the great window, surrounded by Jolene’s African violets. No Don handing out assignments or tearing into substandard writing. No Don saying, “Charge it to
The News.
” My eyes filmed with tears, and I had to swallow several times to get rid of the lump that threatened to choke me.

One sign of normalcy stood out in the room like a beacon. In the middle of all the police activity sat Mac, hunkered down at Edie’s desk, typing like crazy. I knew what he was doing.

“He’s writing an article for Monday’s paper,” I said. “Do we even have a paper to print anymore? What happens when the owner/editor kills himself?”

Mac must have felt our eyes on him. He looked up, saw us in the doorway and came hurrying over. He was crackling with tension and energy.

“Merry, I need your copy on your conversation with Gershowitz and your capture and escape from Don.”

“Mac!” I was stunned, though I’m not certain why. If he was working as usual, of course he expected me to do the same. “You don’t have to do it tonight,” he said magnanimously. “You can come in tomorrow or wait until Monday morning, but I need that material by the deadline. We’re going to assume we have a newspaper until someone tells us we don’t, and we’ve got a major story to publish!”

“She won’t be in next week,” Curt said. “Can’t you see she’s emotionally spent? She needs some time off.”

“She’ll be in,” said Mac, looking at me dispassionately. “She’s a newspaperwoman.” And he turned back to his desk.

I nodded and kept nodding as I walked outside. I was too tired and drained to think much right now, but I knew Mac was right. We still had a paper to produce until someone told us otherwise, and I was a writer for that paper. Maybe tomorrow I could put some words together, maybe not until Monday, but I would do it.

Curt drove me to the hospital where we waited while the emergency personnel dealt with a teenage girl who had unsuccessfully slit her wrists and the girl’s mother who kept crying, “Why? Why? What did I do wrong?”

Next a young couple came running in with a baby who was having trouble breathing. Then came the ambulance with the victims of a car wreck and a man with a profusely bleeding head injury. He sat in a chair near us as he waited to be seen, a huge towel held to his head.

“She didn’t mean to hurt me,” he told us. “She was just mad, and the frying pan was the closest thing.”

We nodded our understanding as a young woman took her seat next to him and grabbed his hand.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you so bad,” she said, tears ruining her mascara. “I was just so angry at you, and the fry pan was right there!”

“See?” he said to us. “I told you.”

The result of all this activity was that Curt and I had lots of time to talk before anyone got around to a woman with a swollen elbow and a badly cut shin.

“Don and I both came to Amhearst looking for something,” I said as I settled into the curve of Curt’s arm where it ran across the back of my chair. “What happened for him? How did it turn out this way?”

Curt shook his head. “A series of bad choices, I guess.”

“But why didn’t any of us see it coming?” I asked.

“See what coming?” Curt rubbed at the grease on my cheek, succeeding only in getting it all over his fingers. “His uncontrollable rages? His need to protect himself and his position at any cost?”

“But friends should see trouble coming and stop it,” I said. “I feel we failed him.”

“Friends probably should,” Curt agreed. “But we were hardly friends in any deep way.”

I knew he was right, but I brushed his comment aside as too easy. “Maybe if Trudy hadn’t died, things would have been different for him. I think he really loved her.”

“Maybe it would have been different,” Curt said as he rubbed the grease from his fingers onto his jeans. “But she did die—and maybe she died because of his temper, just as Joan did. He has made horrendously bad, even evil, decisions for years, decisions that almost cost you your life, too.”

I waved my hand as if the attempts to kill me were just so many misunderstandings.

Curt took my hand. “Merry, look at me. What I have to say is important.”

I turned to him.
Such a fine face
and
such honest eyes,
I thought.

“You can’t explain everything, and you can’t fix everything,” he said seriously. “Life just isn’t that neat.”

I stared at him for a minute. “Didn’t I just say the same thing to you in reference to Joan’s death?”

“Did you?” He looked surprised.

I nodded. “Back at the paper.”

“Oh,” he said as he scrambled to remember. “Then you’re very wise.”

“Right. And I can see that you really do listen to me.” But I smiled.

He smiled, too, as he stared at the grease residue on his hand. “There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t berate myself for not seeing how serious things were for Joan and not helping her somehow. But I can’t change anything no matter how much I want to. I can’t go back. I just have to learn to live with what is.”

“Guilt and regret,” I said as I reached out and rubbed the grease on his hand. “They’ll get you every time, won’t they? I guess part of learning to press on is learning to deal with them.”

“And the only way to deal with them is to put them in the arms of God every time they threaten you.” He closed his hand around mine. “Believe me, I know.”

We were silent for a few minutes. If no one else showed up bleeding all over the place, I should be next for treatment.

“One more thing,” Curt said. “Wrong is always wrong. Don’t get all soppy about Don now that he’s dead. He still tried to kill you. He still pushed Joan. He still shot Andy Gershowitz.”

“Marshmallow Merry,” I said as my name was called. “Always feeling sorry for the guy in trouble.”

Curt gave my hand a brief squeeze. “Caring about people is a wonderful thing,” he said. “Just keep it in perspective.”

It didn’t take long for me to get a tetanus shot, an ice pack for my elbow and a sturdy dressing over the stitches in my shin. Curt would have to stop at a convenience store for a new supply of Tylenol for me on our way home, and he could take me to Brandywine Steel for my car tomorrow. I didn’t have the stamina to get it tonight.

My mind was so occupied with thoughts of the night’s events that I didn’t even notice the lilac tree when we finally walked to my door. Real horrors had pushed imaginary ones aside.

TWENTY-TWO

C
urt and I went to the hospital Sunday after church to visit Andy.

“Are you family?” the receptionist asked us suspiciously.

When we reluctantly admitted that we weren’t, she said, “He’s in critical care and under police guard. No visitors but family.”

Knowing his mother’s plans, I thought we’d be a safer bet than she, but I recognized a closed door when I saw it.

“Will he be all right?” I asked.

She consulted her computer. “He’s doing as well as can be expected.”

“Thanks,” Curt said, and I think we both were thinking
for nothing
.

“Sergeant Poole can get us in,” I told Curt with more confidence than I felt. “We’ll call him tomorrow.”

When we got back to my apartment, Curt walked me to the door.

“I’ve got to take a nap,” I said. “Last night I kept waking up every time I fell asleep, either hearing a gunshot or seeing Don or rolling on my elbow. Maybe today I’ll do better. I need to. I’ve got to get some rest so I can write my story.”

“Oh, Merry.” Curt, who looked so fine in his denim shirt, sleeves rolled up his forearms, was distressed. “Don’t let Mac pressure you. Don’t write that story. You don’t have to.”

“Sure I do. It’s my job. I can write here on my laptop and send it in electronically.”

“But it’s not good for you to keep reliving it.” He followed me in when I opened my door. “Just relax and let it all go.”

“I find writing helps me deal with things,” I said. “It’s cathartic.”

“I think you should just take some time off. I really do. It’s pretty rough, what you’ve been through.”

I shrugged as I hung up my coat, noticing that Whiskers had shed all over it and I hadn’t even noticed. What was it about white cat hair and navy-blue wool?

As much as I wanted to, I didn’t offer Curt a hanger.

I turned to him and saw Whiskers’s hair on his navy Dockers. Maybe I should get the animal shaved like a poodle, with the little tufts at ankles and head. Maybe that would solve the shedding problem.

“I learned some important things through all this,” I said to Curt as I picked absently at the white hairs on his shirtfront. “I learned that pressing on is making choices, hopefully good ones, and learning to live with the consequences. And I learned that it takes character and guts to make good and godly choices.”

He nodded. “Sounds right to me.” He grasped my hand and pressed it against his chest.

I pulled my hand back, turned him around and pushed him toward the door. “Thanks for being there several times when I needed you,” I said to his back so that I didn’t have to deal with his melting brown eyes. I resisted the urge to de-Whiskers his broad shoulders. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

He grinned, obviously pleased, as he looked back over his shoulder at me. “I think you know that I like being there for you.”

“I’ve gotten that idea,” I agreed. “Now you’ve got to go. I’m going to sleep, then work.”

He spun around and stood facing me. He took a step closer, and I took a step back. He pretended not to notice. “Take your nap. I’ll go take one, too. Then I’ll pick you up and we’ll get dinner and—”

“No, Curt. I have to write my story.” I felt like yelling,
Turn on your hearing aid, you handsome idiot!

“Merry,” Curt said, and his index finger came up to help him make whatever point he wanted to make. I didn’t give him a chance.

“Curt!” I stood legs apart, hands on hips, in a typically attractive feminine pose. “Don’t tell me what to do! I mean it! Stop trying to manage my life! You’re a wonderful guy in a number of ways, but hasn’t anyone ever told you you’re bossy?”

I yelled the last endearment over the ringing of my cell phone.

I grabbed my purse, fumbled for my phone, flipped it open and barked, in the same sweet, dulcet tones, “Yes!”

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you you’re stubborn?” Curt said stiffly.

“Feisty,” I corrected him, and ignored his “Ha!”

“Merry, babe,” came a voice over the phone. “You were right. I was wrong.”

“Feisty-schmeisty,” said Curt. “Obstinate is more like it. Independent to a fault.”

“
Whose
fault?” I snarled. “Not mine.”

“That’s right,” said the happy voice on the phone. “That’s what I said. Not yours. Mine.”

I held the phone out and stared at it. I jammed it back against my ear just as Curt stuck his nose inches from mine and said, “Sometimes I wonder if you’re worth the emotional upkeep.”

Glaring at Curt and unexpectedly cut by his words, I yelled into the phone, “Who
is
this?”

“But then I think about it,” Curt said with a sweet smile, “and I know you are.”

My knees nearly buckled.

“It’s Jack, sweetheart,” came the happy voice down the miles. “I miss you, and I want us to get married in June. How about the fifteenth?”

This time my knees did buckle.

Dear Reader,

If you have read
Caught in the Middle,
you are an answer to prayer. How’s that for an unexpected and wonderful thing?

Several years ago when the Caught books
(Caught in the Middle,
April 2007,
Caught in the Act,
May 2007, and
Caught in a Bind,
June 2007) were first printed, I asked the Lord for certain sales.

To my sorrow the books did not do that well. I was very disappointed because I love Merry. I thought she had a lot to share with her readers. I continued to ask for that sales number, though I couldn’t imagine how that prayer could ever be answered.

Then the books were declared out of print. Now I really couldn’t imagine how that prayer could be answered.

But God heard and He has answered through the joy of seeing these three books reprinted by Steeple Hill Books. I have even been given the joy of writing a fourth Merry book,
Caught Redhanded,
August 2007.

The moral of this story? God answers our prayers in His time and His way. I thank you for being part of this truth in my life. What surprising answers or unexpected timing have you experienced? Share with me at [email protected] or at www.gayleroper.com.